


Looking-glass

by revise_leviathan



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 08:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3844150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revise_leviathan/pseuds/revise_leviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both part of the war but naive to the war, in different ways, and while it frustrates them that the other can keep that innocence so far in, it helps them come to grips with working together.</p>
<p>Response to the Arc-V 30 Day Challenge, Day 28: Innocence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking-glass

**Author's Note:**

> I really like the time they're taking to realistically set up these two people from enemy factions working together with what seems to already be a fairly respectful working relationship. This kind of thing is what I love seeing.

It was hard to believe a soldier could be so naïve.

Not that Shun had known what Serena was when she’d dragged him out from under Sora’s nose, but naïve was the only thing anyone could be if they walked into a situation like that expecting to walk out unscathed. Sora giving chase and the Obelisk Force grunts being prepared with direct counters to her deck both seemed to come out of nowhere for her – glaring rookie errors, especially when the Obelisks had come for her specifically. She was better than the Standard kids lining up to lay down their lives for them ( _him_ , if only he could understand why), but this wasn’t what he’d been expecting from Academia, no less someone so valuable to them.

And yet, that had helped him, in a way. He’d never realised that anyone from Academia could be so completely unaware of what they were doing, but the horror that crossed her face as he told her of how war was really played was nothing that could have been fabricated. It was both comforting and terrible to consider that not all of the enemy could be blanketed under the easy label of ‘monster’ – but then, she wasn’t really the enemy anymore, was she? Had she ever been, when the first time she’d take the battlefield would be to crush the people who’d kept her locked up, a powerful weapon never utilised?

Either way, he had a feeling that innocence wouldn’t stay much longer.

\--

It was hard to believe the last Xyz survivor could be so naïve.

She would have thought these years of him fighting Academia in their overwhelming numbers, and even that duel against the three that had come after her, would have made him realise their strength. It wasn’t an easy thing to admit, that your enemy was far greater than your side could ever hope to be, but it was the simple truth of the matter and ignoring it could get you killed. It almost _had_ gotten him killed. But here he was not a few days later, threatening to storm Academia himself because the Lancers weren’t going there just yet, because Akaba Reiji knew tactics and knew that as they were now, they’d be crushed in a heartbeat.

She knew he was trying to ignore the meaning in her words as she prised a back-turn out of him, but there was a limit to how much someone with any experience of this war could pretend wasn’t real, and if there was anything he had over her, it was experience. A bitter thing for her to admit for more reasons than one, but this person she came to kill was turning out to be the only person in the Lancers she could even come close to relating to – Reiji was too conniving for her tastes, and Sakaki was looking for his friend, not her. Maybe Kurosaki was too, really.

But then again, a soldier was always a soldier at the core.


End file.
